Jacques Barzun Quotes & Sayings

“Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.”

“Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.”

“Schools are not intended to moralize a wicked world, but to impart knowledge and develop intelligence, with only two social aims in mind: prepare to take on one's share in the world's work, and perhaps in addition, lend a hand in improving society, after schooling is done.”

“In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.”

“The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.”

“If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real.”

“If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.”

“I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.”

“Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”

“Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.”